Jonesville, VT

 Home again!

It was a fine journey   11288 miles total, 8000 with the trailer attached  

We parked at 1:49, Skye was in the Huntington River by 2:10   

Milford, NY

It was a bright and sunny day, but as we come north it gets cooler!  We have seen the essence of time travel once again.  A couple days ago it was full leaf foliage on the trees, then thinner and that light spring green color, then lots of buds but little leafing out, now mostly bare trees with some budding.  Going backward in the spring season.  I say that every year because it is impressive to see. 

Tonight we are at the Sunny Acres Swiss Farm.  95 milking head of Brown Swiss with a few Jersey and a couple Holstein mix cow to round out the herd. Plus a few goats, horses and dogs. 

Kyle is a former paramedic and now State Trooper, his wife Sharla does the milking, her mother and grandfather are also involved.  And they have a 1 yr old, Maggie. He invited us into the barn so we watched the milking and met the dogs and goats.  I haven’t been in a milking parlor in a few years now so that was fun. It’s manual applied milking machines for 10 head at a time.  Milking at 4 and 4, so getting up early is normal. But Kyle works 5-5 so everyone is up.  

We had a long walk out back in the fields along the Susquehanna River.  Skye was on leash to keep her dry but she still enjoyed it.  

The horses are pastured just a few feet behind the camper and two of them come over to visit whenever we go outside.  

The farm store has fresh milk, meat, and pies from local sources and other goodies.  The berry pie was very good!

It’s only a couple hundred miles home tomorrow. 

Oh yeah, they have lots of cats.  People still drop off cats at the farm on the presumption that farms can always use another mouser.  Kyle does say they don’t have any mouse problems.  Also don’t have many birds.  

Orrtanna, PA

 It started out as a rainy day, rained fairly hard for a while in Colonial Heights and for a while on the road.  But during the day it let up as we drove away from the rainy area.  It stayed overcast for a long time.  Actually the sun came out at about 6 PM, well after we parked the camper for the night.

We are at another Harvest Host.  Adams County Winery in Orrtanna, PA.  We are fairly close to Gettysburg and came through Emmitsburg MD to get here.  It was our first time in Emmitsburg.  That looks like an interesting little town.  All the downtown buildings have their front steps on the sidewalk, so it all feels very narrow.  Well, the streets are not very wide for real!  It took concentration to keep the trailer between the parked cars and the oncoming traffic!

All pretty quaint considering it’s the home town of FEMA’s Emergency Training Center, the heart of Emergency Management for the US.

Here at the winery they had a big shindig today.  Lots of cars, numerous vendors, live music, even a food truck.  We did some wine sampling and although I thought it was good we didn’t buy anything more.

Colonial Heights, VA, Truck Museum

 Cloudy day, very little sun, but there were a few moments.  Easy drive up through NC.  Some 2 lane scenic roads, some 4 lane US Highway and the rest was Interstate 95.

We are at the Keystone Truck and Tractor Museum in colonial Heights, VA just south of Richmond.  They have 10 Harvest Host sites in the back lot that are either boondocking (us) or with power and water for $35.  Looks like this may be the night we run the heat again.  It hasn’t run for several nights now.  There are 2 Class A coaches here, but they are unoccupied.  We have the place to ourselves.  It was a full house last night and will be again tomorrow night.  Luck of the draw!

The museum is about 3 acres of indoor exhibit.  Rooms full of vintage trucks, tractors, cars and related memorabilia.  We spent 2 hours in there and probably laid eyes on everything but certainly didn’t really see it all.  this will be on our list of places to come again when the travel path brings us near here.  And we usually go by Richmond on most of the north or south routes.

We have almost 100 photos from the museum, I’ll put a small amount on here.  Just enough for the flavor of the place.

Photo of the founder, Keith Jones & wife

This is all his personal collection

He founded and ran a trucking company that was rather successful 

Cedar Point 3

 

This morning we went for another short bike ride with David & Gale.  Then by lunch time they were off to their next campground at the Marine base where they keep their boat.  They had a couple things to do on it.  

So we took the full walk around the nature trail here. We had only done the short part.  Nice trail with a lot of places to admire the lowlands and water.  Plenty of birds and small life to watch.

We tried to check out a cool thrift shop that Gale told us about but it closed at  3:45, so we just got fuel and went back to camp..W did go out for dinner at the Riverside Steak & Seafood in Swansboro.  I had shrimp & oysters, Carlene had soft shell crab.  Good food!  All fresh local NC catch.

The bikes are packed and we’re ready to go in the morning.  Headed to Virginia.  A HH site, truck and tractor museum.